Valence

As evidenced in the MSQ and sidequests for Stormblood in Yanxia, there is some shenanigans around acquiring gunblades and magitek equipment from imperials, so it's not impossible to stumble on those considering the amount of fighting that has already happened for long between garleans and their enemies (since Carteneau for Eorzea, and before for Ala-Migho and Doma). Moreover, in the last two territories that are occupied, it comes to reason that finding those gunblades or gunhalberds/gunspears in circulation is even more common.

He's just referred as Viceroy as far as I know in SB, which is also his title...

Ul'dah also has access to a ceruleum source in Northern Thanalan, which is a rare thing (and thus why Garlemald has been all over it too). Eorza generally is in a state where industrialization is only starting ti happen. On another note, as stated in SB, linkpearls can be jammed too, just not through the same method.

Don't forget a soulstone isn't an open book. It only opens and offers its various degrees of knowledge to the one showing the right amount of maturity and skill.

I guess I would have to skim through all the precise quotes about the GCs sending regularly their mean to the slaughter to go fight primals that would crop up here and there on a regular basis... I got the exact opposite vibes from the story. We get it mentionned several times for the Company of Heroes, that used to face a few primals during the time where the WoL wasn't a thing and slaying eikons. Beats tribes start summoning primals during the 1.0 MSQ and the Ashcrown Consortium takes the brunt of it, where their relations were pretty cordial and business like before (they didn't summon primals before). It takes gargantuan amounts of crystals to summon primals, which isn't a thing that can occur on a regular basis. From the feeling I got when the Company of Heroes tells about their past deeds, Titan and Leviathan got summoned once/twice maybe? It had been long years (or more) when a primal had to be faced by Limsa when they tell the story. This is such a catastrophe that it sticks in memories for decades. Then, a few more cases happen during ARR, HW, etc, where the WoL is basically there to deal with them. In short, unless I find a specific lore burb/quote I missed (very possible!), I don't believe that besides what the story portrays, there is summoning of primals everywhere on a regular basis. Tristan from the SMN storyline is an interesting case though. If I remember correctly that guy was exposed to primal energies not because he was part of a company fighting them, but due to a drama that got his brother. Fighting primals is far from being the only way to become a SMN.

Cid also probably gets somewhat away with it because he's not gigantic (he's almost a midget garlean...). Just look at the size of Nero or Varis, or even Nael. I'm sure they tower above even Roegadyns. Arenvald is somewhere in between, but I suppose what is striking the most for eorzeans is the facial traits and whatnot (aka blond/bleach hair, regal traits, etc). To be honest I'm not that convinced you "can't" hide your halbreed garlean bloodline. Arenvald may tell this, but he also didn't exactly choose to actually hide it. He just tells what you can obviously see for yourself.

We know that cross race relationships or intercourse is seen badly and quite taboo in most of Eorzea, so it's not so much of a stretch to imagine that the resulting halfbred probably don't have it too easy most of the time, at least in the fact that a lot of people probably don't know what to do of them, or don't want to face the possibility of their existence: if your families or close relative find it disgusting, they probably aren't always going to be very kind with the offspring. Note that I don't especially disagree with the deeper meaning of your statement here, but the lore and the game itself goes a great length to present you heaps upon heaps of miqo'te who totally don't have any kind of tribal connection and are (more or less?) completely monogamous. In the former case, most of those that live in cities or among the general population (aka, not in tribes/clans/traditional structures), and in the latter case, I have at least one directly that comes to mind as seen in one of the sidequest in Ala-Ghiri.

Half if not more of the NA servers are underpopulated (compared to EU, that has a lot less servers but most of them are well populated). Adding servers when some can welcome a lot of players is certainly not what SE or any logical sense dictates to do. This is also why they added one for Europe, because they do'nt really have underpopulated worlds. This is also why they bring incentives for people to use free transfers to those worlds. And yes, the 4.0 congestion on overpopulated worlds and the huges queues are part of those incentives. It's very pragmatic.

Are you sure about the DRG soulstone being necessary for the jumps? Jumps have always been something rather elusive to point out from where exactly that power comes from, and I'm rather interested to know more if you have any material in mind on the matter (lorebook maybe? I don't remember the part on DRG well). I think you can learn most jobs just fine without a soulstone - it will just take a lot more time. They are mostly just there to explain how we can learn things in a few weeks that really should take several years to learn properly. Whoever first invented the job would not have had a soulstone, and for entirely new jobs (like MCH) there won't be any old soulstones to learn from. Baring a few specific jobs like MCH and BLM where the soulstone is in the first case mandatory for the job to work, and the latter, not to burn your insides in the process.

Uh, that's usually why I'm often reluctant to lean on ingame examples to make generalities out of it, and it seems my own misinterpretation borked it even further... So the jury's out for lalas and elezens then. I have seen several sidequests where elezens were involved other than the debutante and they were all foreigners. As for miqo'te I have yet to see any portrayed in the Far East, and the quote I had in mind from Fernehalwes isn't as specific as to mention Othard (so it's an old quote and probably refers to Ilsabard actually). So this is ambiguous at best.

My apologies, I wasn't through the 59 dungeon yet when I wrote my comment above, so the OP was misleading to me and I didn't figure it out.

That's why I usually don't feel the need to make up too much stuff that is not written in lore already.

And... I just stumbled on a "Duskwight Debutante" in a quest in Kugane so... I guess you have your elezens too, unless this one is just a foreigner drapping into fine local kimonos. She was not Seikisegumi though.

I don't think there is any mention of a primal having been summoned during the WoL timeline that has been dealt with by someone else than the WoL. It's a possibility, but not a necessity.

"With relative ease". Which is still not trivial and doesn't happen everyday. It happens, and the companies keep an eye on them and the crystal market (cf Ashcrown Consortium among others, but those have mostly ceased since 1.0 when the Beast Tribe started to actively summon instead of trading their crystals). When there was no WoL, the Grand Companies used to send huge companies of mercenaries like the Company of Heroes to the meatgrinder, and most of them died or were tempered (so died anyway, killed by their kin) each single time. When the WoL shows up, guess who's asked to deal with those threats every time? Not companies of heroes. The WoL. This is mostly a personal interpretation, but I really, really doubt a lot of other people face primals on a regular basis these days.

From what I have heard, all of Oceania gets gated behind the EU store, so that would seem normal to me.

The problem is if your registration account is linked to something else than the NA mogstation, I believe it might cause issues. Like for Oceania people, do you usually go through the EU store? ( I happen to know an Australian that got banned from mogstation initially for trying to buy through the JP mogstation because he lives in Japan, for example, or when I had to go specifically through the FR square enix store for the lorebook and not the EU one even if I live in the EU... So Australians got to go through the EU stores, but not me or germans, which is lol ) Then again, take what I say with a grain of salt because it also concerns the SE store and not just the localized mogstations. tl;dr Their stores are gated as hell.

You generally require a soulstone to correctly use a job skillset. You can try without though, and depending on the job, it can end up with more or less catastrophic or awkward results (cf Black Mages). I'm sure you could eventually pick up the art on your own, but keep in mind it would be like creating a full martial art in itself by yourself, and that kind of things takes many practitionners and centuries. Soulstones are repositories of memories and skills. A mentor can help you learn a new job. A soulstone can do that and at the same time impregnate you by the know how, if your understanding and base level is sufficient that is. So what of the black/white mages that took up rapiers to behold this new discipline? Does that mean their soul stones just turned or did they just pick up the technique and discipline to be a red mage based off their sheer practices in magic? They had to start from scratch to create a whole new art, red magic, with their knowledge of black and white magic. It probably took them many generations to elaborate and perfect the art, while slowly filling soulstones at the same time. If you want a point of comparison, the only modern job is machinist. All their members (Skysteel mostly) are more or less brand new machinists, and the art is still in its infancy. The soulstones exist, but they are here only for a specific purpose, which is linking the persona with the aetherotransformer and act as a catalyst. It is hard to say if those soulstones will also start to record their owner's personas and experiences, and while machinists are very rational/scientific people, maybe they won't really care about it. Otherwise though, there is nothing to my knowledge indicating that those soulstones are any different from other jobs, so I don't see why they would not start recording the same way other job's soulstones do. In any case, as shown in the MCH quests, they are still inventing new things and new arts, like the turrets which are revolutionary and the latest gimmick made by Stephanivien, and just after the Gauss Barrel that he creates specifically for the WoL in the same fashion. This opposed for example to jobs like Bard or Summoners, where the WoL and the NPC trainers spend their time actually hunting and rediscovering lost knowledge and technics.

The Far East seems to be composed of the usual races. Hyur (midlander) and Raen is a given, a few lalafells (with eastern names) and a lot of roegadyn (also with eastern names) especially can be seen ingame. I have yet to see miqo'te (maybe there are some!), but the simple fact that Fernehalves hinted at them being there too, I think race isn't really a problem judging by what I see right now. Of course, you can never know when a contradictory lore snippet can come and tell you "actually, those samurai of Hingashi police are all midlanders" or whatever. It's sure that the game seems to mostly portray midlanders so far. In any case, good luck if you try that road for roleplay. Playing the upper caste having the right of life and death (like the Edo era Samurai), also in a role of city police, is probably tricky.

I don't know and I find it extremely annoying, especially since they made lots of effort in the writing of sidequests among others. But when you have 10 of them open, or return to them after a day, it's sometimes great to have... well. A journal where you can get a summary of what it was about already. I know, I actually read quest text. Shocking.

Ah ok thanks. Glad to see the old editor back!

You generally require a soulstone to correctly use a job skillset. You can try without though, and depending on the job, it can end up with more or less catastrophic or awkward results (cf Black Mages). I'm sure you could eventually pick up the art on your own, but keep in mind it would be like creating a full martial art in itself by yourself, and that kind of things takes many practitionners and centuries. Soulstones are repositories of memories and skills. A mentor can help you learn a new job. A soulstone can do that and at the same time impregnate you by the know how, if your understanding and base level is sufficient that is.

Some of those stones are also necessary for some jobs to act as catalysts or channeling stones, like for BLM (Gems of Shattoto) or MCH (used in conjonction with the aetherotransformer). I also suspect the WhM soulstone to be necessary to access the modern version of Succor (Elementals credentials of sorts). Soulstones are of course crafted. Your best source would probably be the Anima series: the Anima is born of various advanced crystal technics able to concentrate enough aether and bind it to a soulstone so that it can eventually form an embryo of personality, evolving eventually to a full fledged conscious being. Your usual soulstone would probably require a lot less specific and rare materials since you don't ask it to hold the crucible of life itself, though, just a repository of memories and personas. So yes, since the first users of a soulstone have to actually print their knowledge and persona on it, those soulstones are blank and empty at first. Same for the anima soulstone, that we get to replace a few times when she grows (the last one most notable step being the ilvl260 where you require pneumite for a node to craft it, which shows the amount technology required here). Also in short, creating soulstones is not something trivial.

Is my formatting toolbox broken? Half of the tools seem to be missing, especially the Spoiler tag... Did I miss something? It has been like that since the forum had gone through big changes months ago...